TG ARMOURED DIVISION
Armoured cars: what can we learn from them, who are they for and how do they stack up as a daily driver? Tea, anyone?
Armoured cars aren’t just for the military, y’know. In fact, they could be our future, as we discover on a tour of Lincolnshire
Stamford, Lincolnshire – the ‘finest Georgian town in England’ according to the signage – is probably the least likely town in the UK to need the services of an armoured car. Barring light insurgency by the local knitting circle or a particularly sarcastic Neighbourhood Watch turf war. But at least the Plasan SandCat MkIV’s beige desert tones resonate with the local honey coloured sandstone. It actually blends better than you think, despite being seven-and-a-half tonnes of sci-fi looking, composite-built “light armoured tactical vehicle”. But here we are.
It seems odd to be gently dawdling around a sleepy market town in this amount of overkill, but today, I have been gently applying this behemoth to my day to day diary, assessing its ability to cope with the mundane, rather than its more usual in-theatre duties. To that end, I’ve been to the supermarket, my gym, picked up some dog food, filled up with diesel (135 litres of it, which wasn’t particularly boring for my wallet), commuted, popped into my local pub for a mid-morning cuppa and generally done all the things I usually would. The most rational question here is simply, why?
The decidedly irrational answer is because you’re looking at the future of the car.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? A normal car has nothing to do with a great big thing like this, a vehicle designed to absorb the worst that the world can throw at it, in some cases completely literally, and at bullet speed. But even though a Fiesta might not have an options list that includes a remote-controlled 12.7mm Browning machine gun, extra GPK (gunner protection kit) for the roof hatch (officially called a ‘cupola’) and six “universal firing ports” from which to... erm... universally fire, the SandCat is actually less intimidating behind the wheel than it might appear.
OK, so it does have doors heavy enough to chop your fingers off if you trap your digits in them, windows thick enough to shrug off small arms fire, is nearly six metres long, more than 2.3 metres wide and over two-and-a-half high with a 16.6-metre turning circle, but that’s just a case of being sizeist, and nothing you couldn’t get used to. There may be slight concerns over parking, what with blindspots the size of France despite slinky angular windows that provide a view that’s more panoramic than you think, but there’s a standard reversing camera. And although it is not, it has to be said, the nippiest car in the Bertie Arms car park, this SandCat drives pretty much like a Ford Transit with an extremely full load. Of lead bricks. Wrapped in uranium. But it’s not the physical dimensions of the SandCat that we’re interested in here. It’s more the principles behind its design and construction that are likely to have some major effects on the future of the car you drive day to day. And that’s mostly to do with the materials your car will be made from, and how it’s put together.
So how does this intimidating machine relate to real life? Well, the SandCat is based on the chassis of a heavy duty US-spec Ford F-Series truck, but the chassis and drivetrain isn’t the important thing. After all, a 330bhp/725lb ft, 6.75-litre diesel V8 isn’t exactly cutting edge. It’s more about what goes on top. And to explain that, we turn to a chap called Nir Kahn, the man who designed it, and a man who has some very interesting ideas on how armoured cars might influence the car you drive in 2030.
“Historically, heavy armoured vehicles have been big welded steel boxes, while the lighter ones have simply had armour panels inserted into or bolted onto the regular thin metal bodies of Jeeps and Humvees, or indeed civilian cars like Mark Riccioni’s 7-Series [see overleaf],” says Nir.
“One of the innovations employed on the SandCat is an architectural concept that we call the kitted hull. At its essence, instead of a welded armoured steel box, the body is a bolted and bonded assembly which allows us to use dissimilar materials – including composites – and to both make the parts and assemble the body cost-effectively in relatively high volumes. Rather than adding armour to a vehicle, we build the vehicle from the armoured materials, usually sandwiches of metals, composites, and for higher protection levels, ceramics too. Without being constrained by the pre-existing geometry of an unprotected vehicle, we can also save weight through design, optimising angles and surfaces to get the most effective use of the materials, designing for production to save weight and cost together, perfecting the ergonomics, and as the icing on the cake, making them look good in the process, or at least to give them an appropriate aesthetic for their task.”
Which all sounds perfectly reasonable – you build an armoured car from the composite armour, rather than bolting armour onto or into a pre-existing silhouette. Make the whole thing a kit and you can box it up and ship it efficiently to wherever in the world you need it. Make those elements sectional – you can swap bits of it out when damaged – and you’ve got an armoured car that’s lighter, stronger and easier to fix. Which is where it starts getting terribly relevant for stuff that we might see on the roads.
Nir again: “While the idea may sound simple or obvious – building armoured vehicles like IKEA wardrobes – the implementation, when these vehicles must survive mine blasts, involves advanced simulation and analysis and a lot of destructive testing. We literally blow vehicles up with crash test dummies inside them, measuring accelerations and the forces on the occupants against injury criteria, just like an NCAP test only even more violent.”
So when you start to add up the various qualities of our SandCat that’s merrily pottering around Stamford, the allegories between designing an armoured vehicle suddenly become relevant to what we need from a car for daily use. A light, stiff, efficient, fixable architecture made from composites that is also incredibly well suited to dealing with bouncing off things. Like another car. Or a lamp post. Or a wall. If you’ve got load pathways capable of mitigating the effects of an explosion, the same stuff would be just as useful in a crash. And when that happens, again, the modular nature of the construction would allow sectional repair or replacement, meaning that insurance premiums would eventually come down, too. A bit strange, but it’s already happening.
“Passenger cars are undergoing a similar fundamental design change. After a century of welded steel monocoques, many cars are
taking a multi-material approach, mixing steels and aluminium with alternatives such as composites and bonding them together with additional mechanical fixtures like rivets. Lessons learned predicting the behaviour of composite structures against blasts are being applied to ensure that new lightweight automotive bodies can survive crash events, to the exact same end of saving lives, weight and cost all at the same time.”
Does that sound familiar? Any sportscar manufacturer can be found using the same kind of language right now, albeit with fewer technical references to the survival rates against mines or RPGs. But it’s not just the material’s science and efficiency that would be affected, because the way that cars look could undergo a fundamental change as well. Because if you revolutionise the bones, then the aesthetic can morph, too.
“To make more cost-effective use of composites involves a fundamental reassessment of how we design cars. Many assumptions need to be challenged, including even the aesthetic ones. Cars are shiny and painted because they are made of pressed metals. But if they aren’t made of pressed metal then why should they look like that? The change will be a slow process, but as we transfer technology to regular passenger cars they will get safer, lighter and more efficient.”
The bones of it? What we’re looking at is the possibility of revolution from an unexpected angle. Forget light technological trickle-down from motorsport – the design and construction of a modern armoured vehicle might well end up having more effect on the car you drive in the future than something like a Formula One car. From the way the car is manufactured to the materials that it is made from.
A strong structure helps with dynamics, giving a solid base for suspension to push from. It helps in crashes, both from an impact point of view, and the ability to make things like airbags deploy as they should. A lighter frame will bring increases in efficiency from the engine, both in terms of speed and mpg, and lightness begets lightness: a floatier car needs smaller brakes and tyres, less cooling, less escalation of need. If you can change the manufacturing process, then you generate more freedom in the design; cars can be more aerodynamic, have more complex shapes, and rely less on the restrictions imposed by their materials.
Which brings me to an inevitable conclusion – that one day we will all likely be driving a son-of-SandCat to the shops, in some form or another. I just hope that they’ll still let me have one with a roof hatch.
“ONE DAY WE’LL ALL BE DRIVING A SON-OFSANDCAT TO THE SHOPS”